84 New Kepler Exoplanet Candidates

Ofir and Dreizler (2012) did an independent analysis to 64 stellar systems from the NASA Kepler dataset. They found 84 new exoplanets candidates in these systems increasing the number of NASA Kepler candidates from 2,321 to 2,405 (Figure 1). Here we did a preliminary assessments of their unpublished results before inclusion to our main Kepler database (Table 1). We found that five of their new candidates are in the habitable zone of the star but only KOI 1574.02 and KOI 1830.02 can be considered potential habitable (-1 < HZD < +1 and 0.4 < r < 2.6). They are both very close to the upper size limit, KOI 1574.02 for terrestrial planets and KOI 1830.02 for ocean planets. KOI 246.03, with a radius of 2.7 Earth radii, is also very close to this limit and considering the large errors associated with these radius estimates is still an object of interest. In any case they are not the best candidates for potential habitable exoplanets but without mass information not much more can be said about their composition and habitability.

Figure 1. New Kepler exoplanet candidates suggested by Ofir and Dreizler (2012) to scale. Those in the 'hot zone' are light red, in the 'habitable zone' light green, and the 'cold zone' blue. Jupiter, Neptune, and Earth are at the bottom for comparison.

Table 1. List of NASA Kepler candidates evaluated by Ofir and Dreizler (2012). New candidates are marked with a + sign in the second column and were numbered sequentially after the previous candidates. Period (P) in days, semi-major axis (a) in AU, planetary radius (r) in Earth units (EU), and Habitable Zone Distance (HZD) are shown before (old) and after (new) their analysis. There was little change to the orbital parameters (P and a) for existing candidates but radii (r) was generally slightly reduced. Those candidates in the habitable zone are indicated in the last column. Note that this table has data for unpublished results and could be updated with new results in the near future.